SOCY1030, DEVIANCE and SOCIAL CONTROL
Fall 2015, Stokes Hall 295S, Tuesday and Thursday, 10-11:45 A.M.
Stephen Pfohl, Boston College, 416 McGuinn Hall, pfohl@bc.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday, 1:30-3:00 PM: and by appointment.
Teaching Assistant: Elise Largesse
"With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is born
power and its opposite: subversion."—Jacques Attali
Course Overview:
This course asks you to imagine social deviance as noise— a cacophony of
subversions disrupting the harmony of a given social order. Social control is the
opposite. It works to silence the resistive sounds of deviance and to transform the
noisy challenge of difference into the music of conformity. Social control is what
gives a social order its power. When effective, social control ritually reduces, expels,
or constrains what is "other" to the dominant organization of power within a
specific historical period.
In imagining the battle between deviance and social control as a contest
between those with sufficient power to produce and enforce some versions of social
reality to the exclusion of "others," this course invites you to engage with a story at
the core of sociology itself. How do societies construct boundaries between what is
normatively acceptable and that which is condemned as deviant? When and how are
social boundaries resisted and changed? What are the material and imaginary
effects of enacting boundaries in certain ways but not others? How is the division
between what is perceived as normative and what is viewed as deviant related to
the repeated production and/or deconstruction of various forms of social hierarchy?
How, in other words, is the battle between deviance and social control shaped by
power-charged practices of gender, sexuality, race, and global economic position?
To explore such questions is to pay attention to how some forms of behaving,
thinking, and feeling are made to appear as if naturally good, while others are
labeled evil, sleazy, dirty, dangerous, sick, immoral, crazy, or just plain "deviant."
This is a core analytic concern of this course.
In analyzing the relationship between deviance and social control, this
course is particularly concerned with the rise and fall of different ways of thinking
about and acting to control threatening forms of nonconformity. Theoretical
perspectives of this sort guide how we imagine and react toward deviance. Indeed,
throughout history a wide array of religious authorities, legal experts, philosophers,
politicians, police, therapists, activists, and social scientists have constructed
competing theoretical stories about what causes deviance and how nonconformity
might best be controlled. In order to understand the meaning and social impact of
such perspectives, students enrolled in this course are expected to critically explore
the conceptual imagery, methodological strategies, and social control practices of
nine theoretical perspectives which have captured the social imagination of
northwestern societies at various points in history. These perspectives have often
been used by those at the helm of northwestern forms of power as ritual defenses
against and/or tools for the global subordination of those they label as "others."
Sometimes these perspectives have sparked social change.
All theoretical stories or perspectives on deviance are told from powercharged social standpoints. These standpoints frame the ways that social actors
view deviance at different places and times in history. The theoretical perspectives
examined in this course are no exception. As such, in studying how perspectives on
deviance are historically constructed and put to use, students will be asked to
consider how their own biographical situations on history influence how they make
sense of and respond to deviance. This is a key aspect of a "power-reflexive"
approach to social boundaries. As a method of social research, a "power-reflexive"
approach demands that as students of deviance and social control we attempt to
discern how our own interpretive pathways are both facilitated and limited by the
relations of power in which we ourselves are situated. In approaching deviance
from a "power-reflexive" viewpoint, this course explores how influential ideas about
nonconformity and what to do about it arise and fall. It is also intended to provide a
scholarly foundation for an ethically informed viewpoint on battles between
deviance and social control and the implications of such battles for the realization of
social justice.
Course Outline/Assigned Readings
Topic One: Control and Resistance: the theory and practice of deviance.
This section introduces students to key aspects of sociological theory and
methods, providing the conceptual foundations for analytic approaches used
throughout the course. Deviance and social control are here conceived as
ritual social practices, material and imaginary "dramatizations" of everchanging natural historical relationships between knowledge and power.
Readings:
1. Stephen Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control: a Sociological
History, 2nd Ed., Long Grove, Illinois, Waveland Press, 2009, Chapter One,
pp. 1-16, Chapter Ten, pp. 401-467.
2. Michelle Alexander, “Introduction“ to The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press,
2010, pp. 1-19.
3. Readings on the learning and labeling of deviance. See Topic Five
below**
Topic Two: Supernatural Controls and Sacred Transgressions.
This section examines the rise of Judaic-Christian perspectives on deviance
as "sin" and the implications of this distinctive religious viewpoint for a
sociological understanding of culture, sexuality, gender, and spirituality.
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 19-58.
2. Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature,
New York: Harper and Row, 1981, pp. 1-81.*
3. Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: rediscovering the
religion of the earth, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987, pp. 2-32, 50-54,
63-65, 79-86, 116-130, 165-218, 230-263, 276-329.
4. Barbara Ehrenreich, Chapter 4, “From the Churches to the Streets: the
Creation of Carnival” and Chapter 5, “Killing Carnival: Reformation and
Repression” in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 2006, pp. 76-117.*
Video: The Burning Years.
Topic Three: Social Control in the Age of Reason: "the (white) Rights of Man".
This section examines the sociological development of eighteenth century
legal theories of deviance as "rational hedonism" and nineteenth century
notions of nonconformity as sickness. In critically examining these
perspectives, each is compared with sado-dispassionate worldviews that
arise at essentially the same time in history. Is it possible that a cultural
disposition toward sadism operates as an unacknowledged shadow of both
classical rationality and the positivist methods of a medicalized approach to
deviance? What are the implications of such a sado-dispassionate shadow for
the ritual organization of sex/gender, racial and economic institutions?
A. Cool Man Calculating: the classical perspective.
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 61-99.
2. Michelle Alexander, Chapter 1, “The Rebirth of Caste" in pp. 20-57; and
Chapter 2, “The Lockdown," in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press, 2010, pp. 58-94.
3. Michel Foucault, “Panopticism" in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, pp. 195-228.*
Video: The Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti.
B. Deviance as Sickness: medical positivism and control of the flesh.
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 101-168.
2. Ethan Watters, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” The New York
Times Magazine, January 10, 1010, pp. 41-45.*
3. Tanya Marie Luhrman, “Beyond the Brain: the Social Causes and Cures of
Mental Illness," Utne Reader, No. 175 (January-February 2013), pp. 38-42.*
(Originally published in The Wilson Quarterly)
Video: Stephen Pfohl and Avery Gordon, Criminological Displacements.
Topic Four: Sociological Surveillance: pleasure of the scientific gaze.
This section provides a critical introduction to the concepts, methods, and
the historical context of perspectives dominating the sociological imagination
of deviance from the years following World War I until the 1950s. Particular
attention will be paid to economic, gendered, and multicultural dimensions
of both deviance and social control.
A. The Disorganization Perspective: Rapid Social Change and Normative
Breakdown
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 171-218.
2. Michelle Alexander, Chapter 3, “The Color of Justice," in The New Jim Crow,
pp. 95-136.
B. Functionalism and Cybernetics: Deviance as Adjustive Feedback.
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 221-249.
2. Michelle Alexander, Chapter 4, “The Cruel Hand," in The New Jim Crow, pp.
137-172.
Video: The Girlfriend Experience.
C. Lost in Desire: the Anomie Perspective
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 251-294.
2. Michelle Alexander, Chapter 5, “The New Jim Crow," in The New Jim Crow,
pp. 173-208.
Video: The Inside Job.
Topic Five: Learning and Labeling Deviance
This section provides an overview of two perspectives focusing on the role of
social interaction in shaping the development and control of deviance. Both
perspectives were particularly influential in the 1960s and 1970s. (*The
readings from Images of Deviance and Social Control for this section are
relevant to the "historical autobiographies" assignment and should be read
during the first month of this course.)
A. Becoming an Outsider: the learning perspective**
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 297-343.
B. Questioning Social Control: the problem of societal reaction**
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, pp. 345-398.
2. Paul Butler, “Justice on Drugs,” in Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of
Justice, New York: The New Press, 2009, pp. 41-55.*
Topic Six: Power-Reflexive Reconfigurations of Deviance and Social Control
This section concludes the course with a discussion of a variety of
convergence critical viewpoints. Of particular concern are the contributions
of pluralistic conflict, feminism, Marxism, anarchism, anti-racist, and
poststructuralist critiques of hierarchical orderings of power and knowledge.
Readings:
1. Pfohl, Images of Deviance and Social Control, Chapter 11, pp. 468-513.
2. Patricia Williams, "On Being the Object of Property," in The Alchemy of
Race and Rights, pp. 216-236.*
3. Michelle Alexander, Chapter 6, “The Fire This Time," in The New Jim Crow,
pp. 58-94.
4. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, New York, Penguin, 1994 (1970).
.
Course Requirements:
This is a core course in sociology. It is also cross-listed as a course in
Women's Studies, Psychoanalytic Studies, and American Studies. Its aim is to
introduce students to the sociological study of the theories, methods, and
policy implications of various approaches to the social control of deviance.
Toward this end, the course has three major individual writing projects—
two essay exams and a "historical autobiography." A fourth assignment—the
group ethnographic project—also includes a writing component. A detailed
explanation of each of the following assignments will be provided during the
course of the semester.
1. "Sociological Autobiography" of involvement in deviance and/or social
control: 5-6 page essay (20% course grade), due in class, Thursday, October
1st. Please note: In additions to concerns discussed in the first month of the
course, students are asked to make use of ideas from in Chapter 8, “The
Learning Perspective” and Chapter 9, “The Societal Reaction Perspective” of
Images of Deviance and Social Control: a Sociological History.**
2. First Take-Home Essay Examination, due in class Tuesday, November 3rd.
(30% course grade). Examination will be distributed in class on Tuesday,
October 20th.
3. Final Take-Home Essay Examination (30% course grade), due no later than
Tuesday, December 15h, 12:00 PM. Examination will be distributed in class
on the final day of the course, Tuesday, December 8th.
4. Group Ethnographic Project: team field research, description, and theoretical
analysis of a particular scene of deviance and/or social control. Final group
projects involve both a written component and mixed-media presentations
to several other small ethnographic research groups. Research groups will be
organized by students' topical interests and will meet three times over the
course of the semester with the course’s Teaching Assistant prior to final
project presentation (20% course grade).
5. The class will periodically break into small groups to discuss assigned
readings and course themes. All students are expected to actively prepare for
and participate in these discussions.
Academic Integrity
Academic Integrity is of utmost importance to this and all Boston College courses
and research. The university’s academic integrity procedures will be rigorously
enforced. For a full description of Boston College’s academic integrity policy, see
WWW.bc.edu/offices/stsrv/academic/resourses/politcy/#integrity